Killing The Goose?

"We are the best in the world" said Hope Solo in announcing her support for the EEOC complaint filed by her and four other members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team this past week against the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Setting aside concerns that Solo provided bulletin board material for 15 other national teams (and that she would have the temerity to bite the hand that not only fed her but provided support when she faced a domestic violence charge  (yes, I just linked to a People Magazine article) that could have ended her World Cup hopes, if not her career, last year), while Solo's statement is completely defensible given that the team is the reigning World Cup and Olympic champion, it does not conclusively prove the players' case.

Too easy, I know (photo from businessinsider.com)

By now my support of women's sports in general and soccer in particular should be well-established. I believe in level playing fields (and similarly surfaced playing fields) for men and women.

But equal opportunity does not necessarily mean equal pay.

While I am all for the women receiving pay commensurate with their work and the money that they generate for U.S. Soccer (and with their male counterparts if they are entitled to it) I'm not sure that this lawsuit is the best way to try to accomplish that. In fact, a victory for them could actually be detrimental to many of their professional soccer playing peers who are good, but not good enough to play for the national team.

The men's team and the women's team are governed by separate collective bargaining agreements, under which the men are paid substantially more for performances in international matches. Important, lawyer-type note: just because you're subject to a collective bargaining agreement does not mean that you are prohibited from bringing an equal pay claim. According to one article, when playing in an international friendly, the men can earn as much as $17,635 in bonus money for a win, $8,125 for a tie, and $5000 for a loss.  The women, meanwhile, receive a $1,350 bonus for winning a friendly, nothing if they tie or lose.

But the ways in which the men's team and the women's team members are compensated are hardly apples to apples. The men are paid strictly on a bonus system while the women are paid salaries and receive benefits more akin to those of traditional employees - severance pay and "various types of insurance" - that the men are not.  And they are also paid salaries as National Women's Soccer League players, which is where the crux of the problem, and the danger in the players' suit, lies.

U.S. Soccer, with some help from the Canadian and Mexican federations, helped start and is presumably helping keep the NWSL financially afloat. It doesn't take a photographic memory to recall the fate of the two U.S. women's professional leagues that preceded the NWSL (but it may to name them), both of which succumbed to a combination of poor management and, frankly, lack of interest in non-World Cup and Olympic seasons. It appears that the players' suit does not take into account the money that U.S. Soccer has spent to start and sustain the NWSL. [In my original post, I surmised here that the federations pay the salaries of non-federation players in the NWSL. After further investigation, I don't believe that to be the case. While information regarding NWSL individual players' salaries is not disseminated, it appears that the league pays non-federation players, while the federations only pay those of "allocated players" from one of the three participating federations. Nonetheless, the suggestion that U.S. Soccer pays the salaries of the highest-paid players in the league appears to be correct.]

The league has benefited those players, who would not otherwise have an opportunity to play professional soccer, by both giving them that chance and proving that they are worthy of consideration for the national team. Crystal Dunn, for example, was the last player cut from last year's World Cup team, but proved her mettle by being the leading scorer in the league last season. Restored to the roster, she scored five goals against Puerto Rico in the Olympic qualifying tournament and appears to be poised to play a significant role for the team in Rio.

Setting aside U.S. Soccer's apparently well-taken position that the players and their attorneys cooked the books by focusing on income from last year (when the women won the World Cup in Canada and embarked on an extended victory tour), its claim that the men's team's games over which it has control (i.e., non-World Cup games) have audiences double those of the women, and that U.S. Soccer has been at the forefront, world-wide, of commitment both to the women's game and to cajoling or compelling FIFA to support women's soccer and women in positions of power within FIFA, there's a more fundamental concern that I have with the players' complaint and the future of women's soccer in the U.S.

Where is the money to come from to pay the players if they succeed?

Unless U.S. Soccer adopts FIFA's more ... creative ways of generating income, the funds to pay a large increase in player compensation may well result in a reduction of its financial commitment  to the NWSL. And while the national team players may or may not care, that would be detrimental to the long-term health of women's professional soccer in the U.S., and perhaps to the national team as well. 

This may all be much ado about next-to-nothing. The Soccer America article suggests that the true motive for the EEOC complaint may be simply to gain leverage in the players' on-going negotiations with U.S. Soccer over a new collective bargaining agreement, particularly in light of U.S. Soccer's filing of its own complaint in February, in which it seeks court confirmation that the current collective bargaining agreement runs through the end of 2016 (fearing, presumably, a work stoppage by the players shortly before or during the Olympics).

But if it is not, if the players pursue their complaint beyond the Olympics or the (hopeful) signing of a new collective bargaining agreement, then I fear for the future of women's professional soccer in the U.S. That may or may not be of concern to Solo and her fellow litigants. But it should be to the rest of us.

The Little Clause that Changed Everything

I have intended for a while to post about Title IX, which recently turned 40 years old. I wasn't sure what I would post, though, until the effect of this very American law was made clear by the most international of sporting events, the Olympics.

I am certain that the legislators that passed Title IX, and the athletic directors and universities that it impacted, did not appreciate the import of that law when it was enacted. The law simply provides: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

As we now know, that simple law, through its application (or imposition as the case may be) upon universities that receive federal assistance led to an explosion of women's sports in the U.S.

The recent Olympics and an excellent article in the Globe and Mail helped me realize that Title IX's impact has affected sports, and equality, well beyond our borders. Yes, the U.S. women's soccer team won its third straight gold medal at the London Games. And our women's basketball players, gymnasts, track athletes, and even markswomen again shone. But the fact that they did so against increasingly global, and talented, opposition speaks to the impact that the law has had over most of the world.

Abby Wambach and Carli Lloyd celebrate their win over Japan.

It was bound to happen, I suppose: an increase in attention to, and spending on, women's collegiate athletics in the United States increased participation and proficiency as more and better female athletes were identified and received top-flight training and coaching. What was less obvious was that this would eventually have a global effect as other nations, intent on keeping pace in the competitive, nationalistic arena of international sports (seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?), trained and identified female athletes or risked falling hopelessly behind.

Title IX's positive influence on women's athletics, though, has been local as well as global. At the start of every soccer season, when talking to parents about the upcoming season I would remind them that high school sports are about success. We were well past the stage where every player received a participation trophy; we were going to play and coach every match to win. That would mean that some players were not going to play much, if at all, in close contests.

I would acknowledge that the players and parents made a tremendous sacrifice to be a part of our team, in time at practice and time away from studies or home, and that each player and parent had to decide whether that cost was worth the benefit. If the benefit was viewed solely as playing time, then surely it would not be worth it for some.

But I also would always mention that the players on our team were offered an opportunity that simply wasn't present when I or most of the players' parents were in high school. And that was the value of simply being a team member. Team sports teach common effort, subservience of individual desires for the good of the whole, and build camaraderie far beyond the playing field in ways that simply cannot be learned in the class room, or even in individual sports.

I firmly believe that while we now see the results of Title IX in the Olympics and on fields of play, we are also increasingly seeing the benefit to society as a whole as women assume, and prove their ability to perform, jobs at the highest level in business, in government, and in coaching. Perhaps most importantly, sports teach women that it's okay to be who they are, that they are valued and equal members of a team and of society in every setting. And they help us to cast aside old stereotypes of what woman can and cannot, or should and should not, do.

As Mary Jo Kane, a professor of sport sociology at the University of Minnesota, who was quoted extensively in the Globe article, simply and succinctly noted regarding our current crop of female athletes: "They talk," Kane said, "about watching the Olympics as little girls and remember saying, 'I want to do that too.' And they have. They are no longer tokens or outliers or tomboys."

An impressive legacy for a 37 word statute, and a reminder that although change seems to occur maddeningly slowly at times, we continue to move toward equality on many fronts.

Pouring It On

The United States women's national soccer team qualified for the Olympics this past week at the CONCACAF tournament held in Vancouver, beating Canada 4-0 in the Final. The women also avenged their loss to Mexico in World Cup qualifying a year ago, beating them 4-0 in the group stage.

All told, the U.S. outscored their opponents 38-0 in the five game, ten day tournament. Those gaudy statistics were aided by a 14-0 thrashing of the Dominican Republic in the first game of group play and a 13-0 stomping of Guatemala in the second. 

Those two wins had some people grumbling that the Americans' coach, Pia Sundhage, had lost her sense of sportsmanship. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that substitute Amy Rodriguez scored five second half goals against the Dominicans and Sydney Leroux the same number (also in the second half as a substitute) against Guatemala.

Sydney Leroux, celebrating after a goal
against North Korea in the U-20 World Cup.

It's easy for someone who isn't a coach in general, or the coach of a national team in particular, to make a judgment call about what is or isn't sporting. But, having been in Sundhage's position a few times myself, I am convinced that there are no simple answers to the question of when, or whether, to call off the dogs.

In my third season as a head coach my high school team beat a school, which happened to be our biggest rival in all sports, 13-0. We didn't start the game intending to inflict that type of humiliation, but things got out of control on the pitch and before I knew it, it was too late to try to save the dignity of the opposing team. I apologized after the match to the opposing coach, who I like very much. He graciously deflected my genuine remorse with a simple "it's our job to stop you and we couldn't" but if anything that just made me feel worse.

After that, my team never scored more than nine goals in a game against any team, no matter how badly out-matched they were. As we strengthened our schedule those breathers got fewer and farther between, but there were always a few matches each year where it was more work to not embarrass the other team than it was to win. I would devise various games within a game to try to keep the score down - after six or seven goals we could only shoot outside the 18, or shoot after five consecutive passes, score on a header, or only a player who had not scored that season, or had never scored, could shoot.

And the players played by the rules or else. I remember at least one game when one of our stars (and one of the fiercest competitors that I ever coached) shot and scored during a blow-out when the rule in effect did not allow it. The goal made the score 9-0 and I immediately yanked her out of the match. She came to the touch-line with a "what did I do wrong?" look on her face, but she knew. And every other player on our team knew too.

My job of trying to keep the score down, though, was easier than Sundhage's. Most importantly, I had the ability to freely substitute players and did so. Sundhage, on the other hand, was limited to three substitutions per match in the tournament. And, let's face it, her bench is a wee bit more talented than mine was.

Another factor that was to my advantage was that when the score got to nine, we would simply pass the ball around. No shooting, no scoring. It was always a concern that it would look like we were toying with the other team. And, to some extent, we were. But we were playing on a field in West Virginia with 50 or so people in the stands most times. The memories of those who played or watched have faded with regard to how the score was reached, but the score itself has not.

To play "keep away" in front of 20,000 fans and television audience, however, is a very different proposition. Was it more humiliating for the Dominicans and Guatemalans to lose by two touchdowns (one with a missed extra point) or to lose 9-0 and have to chase the U.S. players for the last 20 minutes of the match, everyone knowing that they were not up to the task? Would that have been a more sporting way for the U.S. to play rather than continuing to try to score?

I'm not sure I know the answer, or that there is one. But I do know that anyone who says they are absolutely sure what the answer is has, very likely, never had to make that decision themselves.